Imagine expecting the guy who wrote an mpreg Homestuck song to have writing that’s 100% serious all the time when his games have never been that.
I know it’s probably because I’m older than the average vocal Deltarune fan, but it’s so funny how opposite I feel about Deltarune when I see takes like this.
I actually prefer the lighthearted parts over the darker parts. I am so, so burnt out on the barrage of self-serious writing flooding the media landscape at the moment. Not everything has to be some deep humorless mysterybox about trauma 100% of the time. I mean, yeah, the game obviously has some pretty serious story elements but if it was only that it would be god awful. The humor balances it out.
If anything, the world needs this 2010s tumblr ass silliness at the moment and I find it to be a breath of fresh air against how performatively mature and dark a lot of writing for stuff is at the moment.
She is not distancing herself, she constantly pushes a person who shows her nothing but love, support and understanding away and that super visibly fucks that person up. This is part of a recurring pattern that she also shows towards Ragatha, Kaufmo, Gangle and Pomni, just to a lesser extend because these do not know she is trans. Yes, they are cartoon characters who survive whatever they are put through unless they are completely broken in the way that she completely breaks Ribbit and arguably Kaufmo, that does not change the fact that Jax openly revels in acts of pyhsical violence against them while the others do not.
You can argue that the absuse that Jax shows towards everybody in the Circus is a result of her internalized transmisogyny and that she only does that to keep repressing, but here’s the catch: IRL Jax takes a completely different trajectory. She is in her boymoder phase and constantly hangs out at Zooble’s queer bar. She will almost certainly come out in about a year or so whereas the Jax in the Circus just breaks after having hurt everybody around her over and over again.
The interesting point is not how to judge the actions of Circus Jax vs IRL Jax, it is obvious that one is “a huge piece of shit” (Gooseworx’ literal assessment of Circus Jax’ character in the tweet where she shows how Circus Jax could have looked post transition) and the other is troubled, but on the right track. What is interesting here is what makes the difference between these two instances of the same person.
No? She just puts up a wall between them. There’s no “constantly pushing”. All that occurs is Ribbit trying to reach out to Jax and Jax responding with the emotional wall, rejecting the attempt to reach out. There’s no “constantly pushing”, just a big emotional defence barrier placed between them from that point onwards.
Have you ever distanced yourself from anyone in your life then? Have you ever lashed out at someone when emotional?
If you do those two things and then someone later commits suicide do you think that it would be right for the internet to blame you for that person’s death?
I don’t. I’m not close to a lot of people that I used to be close to, some of them extremely close. Moving on from them in my life doesn’t make me responsible for them dying after I do that. We do not have a moral responsibility to stop everyone we’ve ever met in our lives from being lonely after we decide that our connection with them is unhealthy. Especially in Jax’s case where the entire emotional freakout they have with being trans could have caused them to abstract. Going into their shell was a defence mechanism, not an act of evil. It has a horrible outcome because Ribbit eventually snaps from being alone and wanting that connection, but that outcome isn’t on Jax and I wouldn’t put it on you if it happened to anyone in your past that you’ve ever distanced yourself from either.
I’m not even sure if Jax was an asshole before this happens because we don’t really see much of anything before the Ribbit history. Jax becoming really mean and jaded seems to have occurred because of the trauma of this event with Ribbit and the self-blame and guilt that occurs. This makes me even more empathetic about it as a tragedy rather than something they should be blamed for.